Parties, Holidays, and Faux Mistletoe
by V. Emily
Summary: A Christmas-themed one-shot. By some stretch of the imagination, it could be a team fic, but it's mostly Kensi and Deeks. Contains Densi. Fluffy as a cat. Enjoy this out-of-season Christmas fic!


**This is pretty out of season, but oh well. I plead "Christmas in July". Anyway, I hope you enjoy! It's just a little idea I thought up. Let me know if you approve (or disapprove - don't let me get too confident!). **

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own NCIS: Los Angeles, but I wouldn't object to them stealing my ideas. Please, Shane Brennan, I'm begging you! That would be so cool! XD**

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There was a quiet week or two at the OSP where there were no new cases for Callen's team. Paperwork kept Sam, G., Kensi, Deeks, Eric, and Nell fairly occupied as the holidays approached and the flow of cases slowed to a stuttering crawl.

"Am I a detective or a desk worker?" moaned Deeks loudly as he leafed through the sea of papers that hid the surface of his desk. He'd been searching for_ever _(meaning about five minutes) for his favorite pen. It was one of those bobble-head ones with the crazy hair and ridiculously large grins. "I should be finding the culprit in a Marine's murder, not solving the case of the kidnapped writing utensil."

"Are you saying you want a Marine to be murdered?" questioned Callen, his forehead wrinkling in concern as he jotted his sloppy signature (it looked more like the readings on a cardiac monitor than an intelligible name) at the bottom of a form.

"That's not what I'm saying," Deeks protested. "But...come on. This is _boring_."

"Maybe if you behave, Santa will give you shorter holiday work hours, Deeks," Kensi suggested, jabbing her head in the direction of Hetty's office with a grin.

"He doesn't need more free time," Sam mentioned, reorganizing his forms into neat stacks he had mentally labeled 'finished' and 'unfinished'.

"That's a good point," admitted Kensi. "Anyway, Deeks, it's three in the afternoon. We've only got two more hours, and we can go home. Think you can hang in that long?"

Deeks was about to grumble a reply in the negative when Hetty strode precisely into the bullpen. The jeweled pin on the left side of her coat today was a sparkling leaf of holly with emerald berries. Her coat matched the deep green of the leaves and a holiday-season gleam was in her eyes.

"Cease!" she declared grandly, putting a halting hand up. "Pens down."

Everyone obeyed without reluctance. Deeks actually slammed his poor, happy-faced pen down on the desk.

"Tonight, we shall celebrate Christmas Eve here in the OSP. I have errands for you all."

Of course, Deeks had to ask. "Do these errands involve filling out paperwork?"

Hetty bemusedly shook her head.

"None? Nada? Zip? Zero?"

"None, Mr. Deeks."

While Deeks whooped for joy and exclaimed something about a Christmas miracle, the other three members of the team crowded around their minuscule boss.

"Mr. Hanna, Mr. Callen, you will make a trip down to the grocer's and pick up the items on this list," she instructed, handing a sheet of paper to Sam that was filled with her neat cursive handwriting. "Talk to Mr. Steward, the butcher. I've spoken to him already about my order. Ms. Blye, you and Mr. Deeks will go purchase some decorations for this office building. It is severely lacking in anything holiday."

She handed Kensi and Deeks two twenty-dollar bills, and gave the same amount to Sam and Callen. The two pairs of partners left the OSP in lighter spirits.

"Well, look at that, Deeks," Callen said with a grin. "You got a case after all."

"You guys don't forget to buy Kensi something sweet," Deeks called as the pairs went their separate ways in the parking lot. "Something with lots of frosting."

"And get Sam a party blower," Callen responded. "The big guy loves party blowers."

From the passenger seat of Callen's car, Sam grunted. With that laughable image in their heads, Deeks and Kensi drove off towards the nearest decoration store. It took fifteen minutes of arguing over directions, but finally they parked in the lot of a crowded party shop.

"Streamers," Kensi directed, letting Deeks steer the cart and pick the items off the shelves. "Not orange streamers, Deeks. This is Christmas. What are you, color blind?"

"What are you, mainstream?" Deeks retorted. "Red and green for Christmas? That's so traditional."

"Exactly," Kensi said, taking the package of orange streamers out of the cart and replacing them with two packages of red and green. "Now, balloons."

"You're going to make _me _blow them up, aren't you?" Deeks asked.

"Every single one, unless you stop complaining."

The rest of the shopping trip went in much this same manner. At one point, Kensi remembered that they were going to need plastic tablecloths, and went bustling back to a previously-visited isle. She commanded Deeks to stay put with the cart. Resting his elbows on the bar of the shopping basket, he let his eyes wander to the shelf that sat on his left. His eyes lit up when he saw its contents, and making sure Kensi wasn't back already, he discreetly slipped a thin package under the bags of seasonal balloons. He made sure he was the one paying at the counter so that his partner wouldn't see what he'd bought. At least not until later.

Two and a half hours later, with care of work hours discarded, the team had finished decorating the first floor of the OSP. Many employees had already left to spend Christmas Eve at home with their families, or simply did not celebrate Christmas at all. Sam, though enjoying the celebration, glanced often at his watch. He had promised his wife and children that he'd be home at six thirty to decorate the Christmas tree. Also, he'd vowed to his wife (crossed his heart and hoped to die, specifically) that he'd be home to help her wrap presents. Sometimes that woman scared him as much as Hetty. But oh well, she was Sam's wife and he loved her.

Some brilliant young agent had suggested that music be put on. So now, as "Jingle Bell Rock" blasted from the stereo, Kensi sipped her ginger ale and kept a wary eye on her partner. He kept making eye contact with her from across the first floor, and it was really starting to peeve her that she didn't know why. At last, as the song began to come to its end, Deeks rose from the couch where he'd been sitting and make a beeline for where Kensi was standing with Nell.

"Hi!" he chirped.

"Enjoying the party, Deeks?" Nell asked.

"Definitely," Deeks replied. "The refreshments, the company, the music...and hey, speaking of the music, Kensi..."

Oh, _this _is why he was staring her down. What to say?

The next song began to play and Deeks made an exaggerated gentleman's bow. "May I have this dance?"

"That depends; how much will you pay me?"

Deeks grinned, but she could see in his face that he really did want to dance with her. She wanted to dance with _him_, sure, but how to say yes without making everyone else painfully aware of her...erm, unspoken sentiments towards her partner? Kensi couldn't think of a single method, so she turned to option B, which was refusal.

"This is 'Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer', Deeks," Kensi protested, trying her best to appear joking.

"My favorite song to dance to," persisted Deeks. He offered her his hand. "I promise not to step on your feet, if that's what you're afraid of."

Kensi glanced at Nell, who had raised her eyebrows and was giving her an encouraging expression. Oh, why not? Everyone was probably painfully aware anyway. Kensi took his hand and let him lead her away towards the middle of the first floor, where a handful of other pairs were dancing. Most of them were strangers to one another, doing to other a Christmas courtesy by accepting the other's offer to dance.

Kensi allowed Deeks to put his hands on her waist, but made sure to give him a glare. She placed her hands on his shoulders nonetheless, the fabric of his cotton t-shirt (he'd insisted on wearing orange after the streamer debate in the decoration store) soft under her fingers. It seemed kind of odd to just stand there and dance slowly to "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer", but Deeks was grinning like a fool and Kensi had to admit that she was enjoying the dancing, so she didn't insist on stopping. She didn't even realize that they were slowly moving in a line towards the far right side of the first floor.

As a second song began to play, he cleared his throat subtly and mentioned without tearing his eyes from hers, "Oh, would you look at that. It seems we're standing under some mistletoe."

Kensi felt her heart flip as she looked up, but it quickly settled. "Um, Deeks, I don't see any mistletoe."

Deeks's eyes widened and he too moved his gaze upwards. He spotted the plastic fake mistletoe that he'd bought earlier at the store - it hung from the ceiling about five feet too far to the right. He muttered a curse under his breath.

Well, this was awkward.

"Hey, listen, can we move just a few feet to the right?" Deeks carefully began to maneuver them towards the mistletoe he'd hung while they'd decorated the OSP. Kensi stifled a laugh at his miscalculation, but settled for a smile. Leave it to Deeks to misjudge lengths, get ****y, and assume that he'd led her to the correct spot.

"Geez, sorry," Deeks continued to babble as he moved the both of them in the right direction. "I was sure that I'd stopped under the...okay, there. Perfect."

"_Now _we seem to be standing under some mistletoe," he finished triumphantly.

Staring at him in that ridiculous orange shirt, his hair combed for the occasion, and his eyebrows raised as he wondered how she'd respond, only one option came immediately into Kensi's mind. _Kiss him. _And add fuel to his ego? Yeah, right. _You know you want to. _What on Earth was he doing in her head? _Come on, Kensi, here's the perfect excuse to get away with it. Mistletoe! A brilliant idea, really. If anyone asks, you were just following tradition._

So here it was, the perfect setup. They could kiss now, like they both knew they wanted to, and they could get away with it. Kensi could laugh, pretend like she thought he was joking, and leave him to go chat will Nell. _Or, _she could just kiss him. The paranoid, anti-romance part of her screamed "no" and tried to convince her that she didn't _really _want to kiss Deeks. She didn't want to. She didn't want to. She didn't want to. Heck, who was she kidding? She wanted to.

So she did. And Deeks, though utterly shocked that she did, wasn't about to complain. Unlike Kensi, there wasn't a paranoid, anti-romance part of his mind that tried to convince him that he didn't want to kiss her. So he did.

A few co-workers that the pair didn't know well snickered. Eric snorted in and choked on his soda, wincing as the carbonation traveled up behind his nose. Callen, Sam, and even Nell remained fairly calm as they watched on from across the room. The all-seeing Hetty observed from where she and the visiting Director Vance were talking. She couldn't suppress a small smile. _"Too adorable," _she thought. _"Well, let them have their Christmas fun."_

Just as Deeks and Kensi were thinking that they might need some air in the next few seconds, the mistletoe came untaped from the ceiling and landed unceremoniously in Deeks's hair. Kensi had to pull away just so she could laugh. Deeks plucked the faux plant from off of his head and looked disappointedly at it.

"I just don't have any luck with this thing, do I?" he sighed.

"I don't know; I thought the concept turned out pretty well overall," Kensi replied, planting a kiss on his cheek. "Merry Christmas, Deeks."

"Can duct-tape this thing to the ceiling in the bullpen?" Deeks asked. "You know, so I can leave it there all year?"

Kensi rolled her eyes and grinned as she began to walk away.

"Kensi? Wait!" he called, waving the mistletoe. "'Frosty the Snowman' is playing now! Kensi? Kensi, come back! This is a classic!"

Kensi laughed and rejoined her friends. She knew she'd go dance with him again later during the party...maybe by then he'd have put the mistletoe back up, but she tried to convince herself that that wasn't the reason she was waiting.

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**Be honest. Did you like it? Was it a waste of your time to read? Any and all opinions are appreciated, thank you! -V.**


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